Lupe Fiasco reminds me of one of those athletes that suffers a disastrous injury early in his career that hinders him from ever being the player we imagined he would be.

Lupe is Penny Hardaway, and Atlantic records is his aching, never fully rehabilitated knees that will always hold him back. He was really supposed to be a legend, but sometimes your body just doesn’t cooperate. There remains greatness within, and every once in a while he may drop 30 in a random game, but soon after he reverts back to the sad shell of his former self.

Just like with Penny, it’s not entirely Lupe’s fault, and recently he went on The Tor Guide on SiriusXM’s Hip Hop Nation on SiriusXM Radio and pointed the blame at exactly who we have been pointing it at for a long while now, Atlantic Records. When the host Torae asked how he’s being treated by Atlantic Lupe responded bluntly:

“Bad, to keep it a thousand. I can’t wait to get off. Even with that said, I’m coming with the biggest records of my career over the next two albums just to set myself up for that post-Atlantic Records career. I’ve had a very interesting run for various reasons. I don’t even think about it anymore. I just go ahead. I rock with my homies at the label who are my homies, but that executive level don’t fuck with your boy too heavy.”

Now, David has already told us how Atlantic Records can ruin music by a great artist, more than once. Lupe’s fight for the album he wanted Lasers to be is well documented, but so too is the Lasers that Atlantic gave us.

Feels like just yesterday I was folding clothes during my overnight shift at Abercrombie & Fitch (yup, Abercrombie & Fitch, wanna fight about it?) with headphones jammed in my ear playing Mood Muzik 3 and The Cool endlessly. Turns out it’s been seven long ass years since then and s*it just ain’t the same. Budden made a Twitter and lost me almost immediately, and Lupe Fiasco, well that’s another story.

In the interview Lu goes on to explain how that album was really the beginning of the end:

“I don’t have a 360 deal. Since they can’t eat off my merchandise or my publishing or my touring they treat me like a third-class citizen up there. I paid the price for that.”

“I got my deal in like 2005, so that was when they were still trying to make that thing happen. By the time I got to my second album, The Cool, they really had it in place. I didn’t want to have to do it. They tried to negotiate it with me, it’s just, the money wasn’t right. It just wasn’t right. And we were like, ‘Nah.’ Then they were like, ‘Well, if you don’t sign this 360 deal we can’t guarantee we’re gonna promote your records.’ I was like above a Wiz Khalifa or B.O.B., like, ‘You gon’ be down in the basement.’ It’s like, ‘Alright.’ We just roll with it. Then we come with the hits, we come with our Grammy nominations. We still keep it going in the midst of that.”

Lu has already told us recently that his fourth album Tetsuo & Youth will be “ratchet” which I took as code to mean “it won’t be the Lupe you’ve been waiting for.” Eerily similar to how his label mate Wiz Khalifa warned us beforehand that his latest release Blacc Hollywood also wouldn’t be up to par, and lo and behold, it wasn’t.

Hopefully one day we get that “is he back” 2010 Amare Stoudemire season from Lupe at some point. But then again, that didn’t end so well either.

If you’re referring to Akira, sorry to spoil it, but he has already come out and said it doesn’t have to do with Akria, despite the title Testuo & Youth having A LOT to do with the concept of the series.

If Atlantic treats him like garbage and he’s signed to a contract that has him for a certain number of albums, I can’t get mad at him for just releasing whatever in order to break away.

…I CAN get mad that he hasn’t just burned through those albums already tho, lol. Didn’t I just read an article about Gucci Mane releasing multiple albums in one year?

And I dunno…while I feel you on the analogy, I still feel like Lupe is better than who you’re comparing him to. F&L and The Cool are classics, after all. They’re still just as good today as the day they dropped all those years ago. If he stopped performing tomorrow, he’d still have those two albums.

Again I will say, F&L is very underrated. Form follows function was lupe at his best just toying with us. 2010 first half of the season amare was just MEAN lol. These songs he put out with Ty dolla sign are hot

Bansky with those sports comparison always on the money. That penny hardaway comparison made me cringe cuz I had some many pleasant memories of penny or at least I think I did, and I was excited for young Lupe the same way. Recently Lupe has my ear again guess the ratchet stuff is up my alley. That “thot 97″ joint I really love.

Lupe is in the same boat as Wale imo. Cryin ass little babies. The talent is nowhere near anough to justify how much these dudes whine about shit. Constantly blaming others for your lack of success is lame. Step up ya grind and make it happen or shut the fuck up and fall back.

But yeah he could go harder to get out the contract or whatever if that’s what it really is but sometimes guys really are handcuffed when it comes to those contracts. We’ve seen plenty artists die (figuratively) on labels simply because they disagree on direction.

Dog. You could have bought your contract out by now. You could have pulled a Nas and just offered up a bunch of garbage to get the monkey off your back. You could have gone back to the mixtape grind, re-established your buzz, and FORCED Atlantic to put you out. I don’t wanna hear it.

A few years ago, I don’t know if it was in reference to Lupe’s crying over LASERS or not, Waka said “Nobody can force you to make the music you don’t wanna make”.

If Wasalu is feeling so artistically frustrated, why not just put out a mixtape or two showing that you’re still hungry? That’s kind of what I thought he was starting to do earlier in the year with the “$nitches” tracks, “Thorns & Horns”, “#THOT97″…all hot songs. He was building momentum. Then the well dried up and we’re back to Whoopi Fiasco playing the martyr card and crying on the radio.

Also, Lu got to make the album he wanted to make, as best I can tell. It was Food & Liquor 2, he got to have his all-black cover, his ‘message’ songs even got to come out as singles. And it was preachy, boring and tedious- an album full of songs where the message got far ahead of the music, and the only buzz he generated was for beatjacking “T.R.O.Y.”. It bricked and it deserved to brick.

Every time this dude starts to get my attention again and he reminds me of why at one point he was my favorite rapper, he regresses and loses me again.

@BGF Nope. At this point, if the treatment is as bad as he says it is, you cut your losses. Chalk it up to the game. Make something better. It’s not like he doesn’t own the publishing on those first two albums, and like he said, it’s not a 360 so they wouldn’t be entitled to show income. Only reason you take the masters is in the event you want to re-issue material, which… Why? In today’s current market climate, why would you ever even attempt to reissue an album almost nobody has heard?

@Patrique Why you acting like it’s putting out mixtapes won’t cost him any money? But then if he went over other people beats you’d be like “Jacking for beats is old, I wanna hear original shit.” I never bought into the idea that artists (especially established ones) have to make mixtapes in order to keep relevant. And iunno what you’re talking about when you say dried up, because the fact that he’s been making radio rounds means something.

@Aaron Smarter I’m sure you understand this as well as anyone, but sometimes it’s not a matter of re-releasing it, it’s a matter of actually keeping your music. I’m pretty sure his contract is over after this album (that’s the reason LupE.N.D. was supposed to be a triple album–he had 3 albums left on his Atlantic deal), so why not take the L, stay with them, release the album, and bounce with EVERYTHING you own?

@BGF & @Aaron Smarter if he wants his masters he might be between a rock and a hard place because I don’t see any label coming up off the masters.

Also some artists benefit from labels simply because they aren’t that type of person that enjoys (maybe that’s the wrong word) the hustle. That’s not a knock on him. Everyone isn’t Gucci Mane where he has a bunch of tracks and throws them out there to see what sticks.

Lupe usually has some sort of theme/message/whatever he wants to convey and that type of style doesn’t bode well for the “grind” game which is bunch of mixtapes, random songs, and freestyles. I’m not sure but I would think it takes Lupe a while to construct verses. You can tell he’s not freestyling album tracks.

Lupe strikes me as the consumate creative. He enjoys (really lives and breathes) his craft: writing, recording and performing his music for people to enjoy.
HOWEVER.
That is NO EXCUSE for not learning how to handle the business side. This is what the label is for: to handle the business of selling the product he enjoys creating. At the very least he needs to surround himself with a team that understands the marketing side of selling a product.
With as many tools as artists (especially established artists, as Lupe is) have these days to effectively “cut out the middleman”… There’s NO reason he shouldn’t be able to use these tools to create, promote, release, and perform his product. But he doesn’t want to do anything past the creation phase, and THAT is why he’s in the position he’s in.

Also, like most artists, he’s very protective of his work. He wants to be the one in control of the product, and he wants to ensure that he gets paid from the sale of the product, but he is too static in his thinking that there is only one (outdated, increasingly ineffective) way to monetize his music. In short, he doesn’t want to evolve, and he’s letting his pride and knuckleheadedness prevent him from being humble enough to start back at box one and force himself to think outside of it.

TL;DR version: if you want something done right, do it yourself, instead of complaining about how the person who is doing it for you is doing it wrong.

@Athrin I don’t care if he’s going over “Started From the Bottom”, I just want him to put the energy he’s wasting on crying about his situation into his music. I’d be more sympathetic to him if this didn’t seem like a repeat of what’s been happening with Lupe for years now.

Nah Next to It is a banger and the message of the song is pretty clear. I’m hoping this is the album where Lupe realize he can still get his message across without being condescending to the listener, because he did a great job of doing that with the song.

I sympathize with Lu and he doesn’t come off as a whiner to me. Just an artist keeping it all the way real about his label situation. And folks on here are talking as though its as easy as a snap of a finger to end his woes but keep in mind even 50 with all his financial muscle still had to serve Uncle Jimmy’s interests till his contract was up and he complained all the way to the end!

I feel that a major reason of all the Lupe hate comes from the last few years when he refused to kiss Obama’s ass as expected of black artists and proceeded to call it like he saw it and that rubbed folks the wrong way.

Yeah I completely forgot about the whole 50 situtation. We’ve seen this times without number, from artists across all boards. If every artist could buy out their contract, I’m sure they would, but the label still have to agree. I have no doubt Lupe tried this before.

Eh… Tribe STILL makes hella money touring and they STILL aren’t out of their original record deal (one more album to go). In the meantime, Q-Tip has released 3 solo albums, produced and appeared on countless other rappers’ projects and performed solo for fifteen years since The Love Movement dropped. Phife dropped an album, then moved on to other things. They were both smart enough to hire managers who still manage to get them booked on these huge festival bills, despite not having released new material longer than some people on this site have been alive. Lupe could finesse the situation. He chooses not to. And the people in charge at Atlantic are taking notes, guaranteed.

I’m a fan of Lupe Fiasco’s music but when the nigga gets to talking in interviews I don’t know what the hell he’s talking about. He’s on that Genius/Mental Issues thin line and on anyday he can fall on either side.

And this is why I don’t like Lupe. Such a peabrain that he could’ve done what many other artists in the past have done and just give the label an album. If they’re not marketing it, then none of your fans will fault you if it isn’t great. They blame the label, like they’ve done for Lasers.